


Verisimilitude

by JeanSouth



Series: Android!verse [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: AU, Android!Takao, I'm sorry for causing pain, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 06:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanSouth/pseuds/JeanSouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after Takao passes in a car accident, Midorima makes an android.<br/>this art was the start of it all! http://nooopantsss.tumblr.com/post/40302375935/remember-that-one-time-i-drew-cyborg-takao-and</p>
            </blockquote>





	Verisimilitude

**Author's Note:**

> Some hauntings don’t require a ghost.

Midorima becomes a man of science.

He gives up fate when he’s twentysix and arguably long past too old for these sorts of things. Midorima gives up on hospitals (hospitals that failed Kise, failed Kagami, and above all failed Takao when they relied on doctors to live), and studies machinery. It’s a craft long-since discovered and recently perfected, with expensive books and parts he has to assemble himself. He feels like the Wizard of Oz when he hunches over books, assembles a chest piece from shining metal and burns his fingertips on loose wires. He makes a body for Takao to live in, a brain to think with, and a heart to feel with.

But ultimately, as a man of science, he has to admit any heart is not the same as a specific heart, and when he sews down the last piece of skin (fake skin; almost real to the touch, made for burn victims and frivolously used by him) with thread he almost can’t see he denies it for a very long time.

Machinery under skin heats, made deliberate as the fans inside (quiet, ever so quiet, they sound like breathing and it’s the worst) spin slow and calm. Its eyes are Takao’s (not really Takao’s; Takao’s are in part with his body, save for the corneas donated to science) in colour and brightness, but the brightness is far from real. When he takes his glasses off, it’s close enough to live with, and orders a voice box in the morning.

Tampering with it until it sounds just right (just like voicemails he listens to too often for his own good, has saved in three places in case he loses them) takes him days, and warm hands rest on his arm. The AI knows what he wants, it’s how he built it, but it draws a lump in his throat when it feels his forehead and mimes worry then fetches him a glass of water.

As the very first word, it says hello. It’s the most painful thing Midorima can imagine, and he turns it off for exactly fortysix minutes before the pain of being alone overwhelms the pain of a familiar voice.

He teaches it who it is, and it learns. Part of him wishes it didn’t.

It (he; it has hands and a voice, a mouth to form words and a process to eat when it demands one to appear more human) devours photo albums, old text messages. It devours the dvds of their old Shuutoku matches, and its expression changes to open its eyes wider than it used to in deference to Takao’s amazing field of vision. At dinner he notices its speech pattern changes more to sound like Takao; it has his laugh. He doesn’t know why he thought it wouldn’t have Takao’s laugh when his laugh was perhaps more common than his words. When it mimics worry the wrong way, he tells it and it adjusts.

After he accidentally calls it Takao (after he starts thinking of it as Takao when it rests a hand on his cheek during maintenance) it insists on that name from there on out.

Of all people, he supposes Takao is most suited to be replaced by artificial intelligence. He always listened, doing what Midorima asked for (despite minor protests), and it doesn’t take too much programming to listen to his orders. It doesn’t struggle when he forgets it’s a machine, forgets he himself is a man of science, and gets Takao a lucky item on his birthday.

“Have you been too busy with me to buy your own lucky items lately?” Takao asks him, and it’s like Takao has only been sleeping, remembers Midorima the way he was years ago when he still adhered so much to his horoscope. Takao scolds him slightly. “You’ll have bad luck tomorrow if you don’t compensate.”

He agrees, despite his years of disillusion, and buys a frog keychain from the convenience store. It hangs on his bare keys after he leaves it on the table with them, and croaks when its pale green belly is squeezed. It makes Takao laugh, unrestrained and genuinely delighted, and maybe his face shows worry because he frowns, forces it into Midorima’s hands and tells him he won’t take it if it genuinely makes Midorima upset (the way he did before; when he took lucky items and broke them, but never past anger to genuine sorrow).

He starts to treat Takao as human. It’s not his first mistake, but it’s his biggest. He asks things he never knew about Takao (do you want salt on this? Do you sleep with extra blankets?) and lets the AI answer them. He forgets they’re not real answers, and forgets this isn’t Takao. His hands are colder than the more tan ones that hold them, kiss them (with lips that have chapstick on them, because they’re just a little dry) and the remark that his fingers are no longer paler than the rest of his hand comes out of nowhere.

Strands of hair tickle his lips when they share a bed, and it’s not sexual (can’t be sexual, not unless he modifies Takao with suitable parts), but not awkward.

Takao counts the dips and curves of his spine when he lays on his stomach in bed, just a little too early to sleep and the window’s open because the rain is bad but sounds good. His fingers draw circles around the edges (like a lover) one by one, from bottom to top, detouring to his ribs then his shoulders, and use their path to his jaw to tilt his head upwards and take a kiss. Midorima falls into the rabbit hole of blue eyes.

Takao learns to cook, but his artificial skin heals over in minutes when he burns it, and it’s a stark reminder he’s not the man Midorima knew in high school. His maintenance doesn’t stop, but he’s too deep to extract himself. He tries talking about it a few times and fails.

“Does it really matter I’m not human?” Takao asks him, with fingers in his hair. They’re slightly damp on the fingertips where the warm room has made the cold drink’s glass condensate. A wet smear trails and dries instantly on his cheek when fingers trail over it. “I don’t know if you programmed me like this, but I like being like this. I like-“

He stops because Midorima stops him, looks faintly hurt (should androids look hurt? Should they want?) and doesn’t bring it up for a while. Midorima can almost swear he spends a few hours sulking at not being allowed to finish the speech he undoubtedly spent days thinking of, worded just right to make them the most convincing thing he’s ever heard (which is why he doesn’t let them be spoken).

Next time Takao doesn’t let him interrupt, and covers his mouth with smooth hands and a tiny bandaid on them despite how quickly his skin heals.

“You didn’t program me to force me into doing anything,” He starts, and laces his fingers together. His hands are strong, stronger than Midorima and impossible to fight. “You programmed me to make my own choices, and I do.”

He hums a little, shifts his legs as if he’s capable of getting pins and needles in them, and tentatively lets go to pick up a bagel and take a bite. The look on his face says he isn’t finished and knows now Midorima will listen. When they’re across from eachother, he strips his shirt off. The skin underneath is flawless (not like the wreckage he’s seen Takao as before, with gore on his waist and his chest full of unnatural caverns).

“Maybe at first, I was supposed to be Takao,” He says, with his fingers sprawled on his chest. There’s no move to make Midorima touch him, as if he’s afraid (hopelessly resigned in expecting) a flinch like the very first time Midorima looked at him. They move slowly, as if it’s the first time they’re aware that he’s solid and real. “But I don’t think I’m pretending to be Takao.”

He flashes a grin, head slightly to the side and teeth pearly white. Midorima doesn’t understand, but the things he thinks aren’t the things he says, and he waits patiently. Instead of blue eyes he looks at one smooth ankle that looks like it caught the sun and never let go again. Legs with fine, almost human-like hair on them.

“Maybe I took inspiration for how people act from Takao, but I learned to be me by myself,” His point is good, too logical but painful. “I think being like Takao isn’t a bad thing. I like being Takao.”

Midorima thinks he almost tacks on an emphasis that it’s his choice (that Midorima programmed choice and the understanding of it into him; that that’s where the intelligence comes into play), but doesn’t. Instead he looks lost for words, fiddles with Midorima’s fingers instead, and eventually places them over his heart (not his heart; where a heart should be if he had one. As it stands, his motherboard is there instead).

“But it’s okay to melt me down,” He swallows hard, realistically, and an artificial adam’s apple bobs with the force of it, as if he has a lump in this throat. It’s Takao in every part of it; willing to sacrifice himself and his like of living (his love of living; Takao always loved living to the fullest, even if they lost) if it’s for Midorima’s peace of mind. “Looking at a face on top of a stolen personality probably hurts a lot.”

There’s no heartbeat under his hand to feel race, but the fans quietly spinning inside make it hum as they work to cool his circuits between the processing of all the heavy emotion. Takao licks his lips as if they’re chapped again, looks up, and waits for an answer instead of pleading a case to stay. He’s earnest, sly when he wants to be and too picky of an eater for Midorima to cook alone.

He doesn’t think he wants to miss Takao again.

Mentally, he takes a moment to piece Takao apart, bit by bit by bit to melt down into a big silver puddle. He only gets halfway through before it makes him want to throw up.

“You must be really extraordinary,” He says instead, and leans forward to strain and see if he can hear the sound of electricity pulsing through Takao’s make-shift veins. A questioning noise is all Takao can manage, and he manages a smile himself. It’s wobbly, a bit pained and uncertain. He tries to explain. “I don’t think an ordinary man could make me fall in love with him twice.”

Shaky hands cage his face and rest with their palms on his temple, their fingers on the tips of his ears when they curl in a little.

It’s such a human affliction, shaky hands, one Takao never had before but does now. A little, ethical part of him wonders if it sullies Takao’s memory to remake him, fashion a replacement and to love it equally.

“I don’t want to melt you down,” He confesses, and places his hands on slim hips. They make his hands look big, and he remembers crafting the bone (metal, expensive metal) that’s just under the surface of skin. It doesn’t feel any different under his fingers than his own do, and he’s ashamed to see his own hands shake.

“That’s okay,” Takao tells him though, like he’s allowed to make that judgement call when he has high stakes in the matter. He says it a few more times, repeats how it’s his choice to be here. “You’re allowed to choose too.”

He does. It feels sinful (unnatural, he supplies for himself, despite knowing in a few hundred years, maybe less, this will be common practice), a little bit wrong and disrespectful, and for a second he sends a thought up to heaven (for where else would Takao be) that it’s his fault for dieing so young. He trails his hands up smooth sides, naked skin and lifts his head. 

He hadn’t been aware the choice had a right answer and a wrong one, but when he chooses to give in Takao looks at him like he did well. He feels like it too, and comes to forget he made Takao himself.


End file.
